For Immediate Release
April 7, 2003

UNITY: Newspapers face diversity crisis and need crisis reaction

New Orleans, La. –- UNITY: Journalists of Color Inc. expressed disappointment today in a report by the American Society of Newspaper Editors that showed there again had been little progress during 2002 in diversifying the nation’s newsrooms, and today calls on the industry to follow through with encouraging proposals for addressing the issues.

The annual census released today by the ASNE at its annual conference in New Orleans showed that during 2002, the number of people of color in the nation’s daily newspapers increased by less than half a percentage point, from 12.07 to 12.53 percent. Last year’s survey showed that the number of people of color in newsrooms during 2001 increased by .43 percent, and the year before that, the survey showed the number for 2000 had decreased slightly

According to the survey, 5.33 percent (2,919) of journalists of color are black, 4.04 (2,212) are Latino, 2.62 percent (1,435) are Asian American and that .53 percent (289) are Native American. Native Americans decreased from .56 percent after losing 18 journalists. The largest growth came among Asian Americans, who gain 152 year over year, while there were 50 more black journalists and 14 more Latinos.

On an encouraging note, the report showed that newspapers that employed no people of color at all dropped by 98, from 471 to 373.

The report was based on responses from 935 of 1,423 newspapers that were sent surveys. (Read more about the ASNE Newsroom Census at www.asne.org.)

The report was further analyzed by Bill Dedman of the Boston Globe and Stephen K. Doig of Arizona State University for the Knight Foundation. Comparisons were made between each newspaper's diversity figure and diversity in its community. (The full report can be seen at http://www.maynardije.org/news/features/030511_census/ )

However, while the percentage increased to 12.53, the ASNE remains far from achieving its stated goal of reaching parity by 2025 with the nation’s population, which is now made up of 31.1 percent people of color.

“This is nothing short of a crisis, it long has been, and the public good would be served by having the powerful forces in this industry declare just that, and react by taking steps to begin resolving the problem like they would any other crisis,” UNITY president Ernest R. Sotomayor said today from the convention after the report’s release.

“While some see progress in this report, it points to continued stagnation, because growth is not keeping up with the changes in our nation’s demographics. This progress amounts to trying to fill a glass a few drops at a time, when the glass just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

“America’s newsrooms face many problems indeed, and lacking the multiculturalism, and the diversity in staffing only creates partial vision for the news media, and that’s not honest, fair, accurate journalism,” said Sotomayor, who is Long Island Editor for Newsday.com in New York. “We contend that news media outlets cannot rightfully claim they have achieved journalism excellence if they have not achieved substantial and meaningful diversity goals.”

The report follows announcements this spring by ASNE that it would initiate a collaboration with the Newspaper Association of America to address the continued lack of diversity, with the focus on two areas: establishing a leadership training institute, and conducting research on readership and diversity and culture. The initiative follows meetings attended earlier this year by representatives of both organizations that focused on diversity issues.

UNITY and its alliance partners also urged ASNE today to take its census to the next level and provide more detailed census data that show the breakdown of minorities at each newspaper, rather than releasing a single aggregate number for each company.

ASNE has responded that it remains concerned that newspapers would be unwilling to release data broken down that specifically, and that asking them to do so might reduce the response rate to the annual survey, which is now at 65 percent.

ASNE officers, including outgoing president Diane McFarlin and incoming president Peter Bhatia, declared in meetings this week that they will accelerate efforts to create new programs, bolster existing ones and form new partnerships between ASNE, UNITY, its alliance partners and others to help increase hiring, training and retention of people of color in America’s newsrooms.

But the initiatives follow months of declarations by both groups over sparse funding that is available for addressing diversity issues.

In meetings earlier this year, UNITY and representatives of its alliance organizations implored ASNE and NAA to seek more meaningful collaborations with the groups representing journalists of color and to support their efforts through mentoring, leadership/management training, skills development programming.

UNITY has urged and pursued meaningful collaborations with the major newspaper industry organizations, including ASNE, NAA and the Associated Press Managing Editors, and urged each of those groups to support the program that is conducted by UNITY and its four alliance organizations. Those vary widely and include mentoring, leadership training, skill development workshops and much more, especially during the associations’ annual conventions.

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About UNITY: Journalists of Color
UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc. is a strategic alliance advocating news coverage about people of color, and aggressively challenging its organizations at all levels to reflect the nation’s diversity. UNITY, representing more than 10,000 journalists of color, is comprised of four national associations: Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association.

In addition to planning the largest regular gathering of journalists in the nation, UNITY develops programs and institutional relationships that promote its mission. For more information on UNITY, visit www.unityjournalists.org, email info@unityjournalists.org or call (703) 854-3585.